CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Monthly Interpreter. Edited by the Rev. Joseph S. Etta. (T. and T. Clark, and Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—Mr. Exell is to be congratulated on the appearance of this the first volume of a new periodical of Scriptural exegesis. He has gathered round him an excellent company of assistants and contributors, and there is every promise of the Monthly Interpreter being a valuable addition to Biblical literature. Professor A. B. Bruce, whose "Parabolic Teaching of Christ" is one of the ablest books of its kind, gives four chapters on "The Kingdom of Christ;" and Dr. Morison supplies a. comment on the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. The chief Old Testament article is Professor Redford's on "The Book of Joel." Of miscellaneous articles, we may mention Canon Rawlinson's article (the first of a series on "Biblical Topography ") on "The Site of Paradise" (he was not aware when he wrote of the latest speculation on the subject which locates Eden at the North Pole), and Dean Plutnptre's on "Philemon."
Lazarus in London. By F. W. Robinson. (Hurst and Blackett).
—This story is written as the autobiography of a young woman, and, like Mr. Robinson's stories in general, indicates a good deal of power. Hand Protheroe, the young lady who is supposed to relate the adventures and incidents of the book, lives with a sister and half-sister in Fisher Street, Soho. They had seen better days, their father having been at one time a merchant in the City, and apparently wealthy. But at the time the story opens the family had long known nothing but extreme poverty. Old Mr. Protheroe, a peculiarly weak, worthless, and unbearable creature, lived in the almshouses of the Spicers' Company at Norwood ; and his two daughters, Hand and Ella Protheroe, help their half-sister, Lydia Campbell, to eke out a miserable subsistence in a small haberdashery shop. Their principal occupation appears to be making surplices ; but not much attempt is made to enter into details about their battle with hunger. All the interest of the tale centres in a mysterious murder which took place in the City on the day we are introduced to the Protheroe circle. The murdered man was Mr. Protheroe's former partner, against whom that unsuccessful man retained a bitter grudge, because Mr. Meekness had got on while he (Protheroe) lay stranded in an almshouse. Throughout a considerable portion of the tale the reader is left in some doubt whether this selfish old wretch is not the murderer; and his daughter Hand, as well as Lydia Campbell, lean to that view themselves. The former discovers a card of the murdered man's which has dropped out of her father's pocket. He had arrived at their house on the night of the crime in an extremely excited state; and when Hand picked up this card and read on the back of it, "Come to my office at seven, and I will bear all you have to say. There will be nobody to interrupt as there," she could not help associating her father with the murder. Nor can the reader, especially when it gradually dawns upon him that Protheroe is half-mad and capable of frenzies of rage. This situation makes the book most unpleasant reading, and the callous sort of way in which the narrator alludes to the matter at times deepens the distaste which the plot produces. Ultimately, it is all cleared up, of course, although not till after a rough lover of Maud's, Ben Wellmore by name, has been taken up and held some time in prison on suspicion of having done the deed. From its title, we might infer that the book had a moral, that it was designed to depict the life of the hapless poor who are ground, and pounded, and battered at the bottom of London's mighty maelstrom; but that is not the case. Two of the waifs of life do, indeed, flit to and fro through the pages of the book,—Isaac Garboush and his drunken daughter Sal ; but their lives have certainly little of the moral attached to them. We doubt, indeed, whether what we are told of them, or what they say and do, represents in any faithful way the feelings and habits of the outcasts of the London streets. Sal, with all her drunkenness and her other crimes, presents, however, the outline of a powerful character ; and the book, on a whole, has one or two striking situations in it. Perhaps the strongest impression it leaves on the mind is that the author could do much better if he took the trouble to exert his powers. The story, it should be added, appeared a short time ago in the Weekly Echo.
There is a good deal of morbid sentiment and hysterical talk in The Unhired Labourer, by "A. M. U." (J. and R. Maxwell), the object of which is to give an account of the difficulties in and out of himself that a young man has to encounter and overcome before he can start on a career as a Christian missionary in India. The book is preposterously long drawn out, and the hero of it is not so much a personality as a mass of self-consciousness, in which all the other characters of the story—to their loss, and perhaps to that of "A. H. U.'s" readers as well—live a rather choked and unwholesome existence. When the fog that broods over the story lifts, as it occasionally does, we get a glimpse of one or two characters that would have figured well even in more ordinary fiction, such as Julia, the somewhat weak and frivolous, but by no means bad, wife of the " nubired labourer," who adds jealousy to his other weaknesses. There is also a very heartless captain,—a forger, and, in intent, a murderer,—who in other hands than this writer's would have made a rather superior villain.
Simplicity in fiction, as in real life, is a virtue, but it approaches perilously near to namby-pambiness in Lady Hope's A Simple Life. (Hurst and Blackett).—A very good and sweet girl, no doubt, is Gentian, its heroine; and Lord Malyon, who marries her at the end of three large volumes, is, no doubt, one of the happiest and most fortunate of men. Lady Hope has, moreover, undoubted skill in portraying characters that are devoid of guile, or that are not notable in any way ; and it is needless now to say that her teaching—when she does teach—is perfectly sound. We object, however, to pages upon pages of infantile ethics like this :—" If we are school-children, as the organist says we are, we must learn our lessons sooner or later. If we do not learn them to-day, we must learn them to-morrow, and perhaps to-morrow they may be harder ; so we had better learn them now, to-day, and leave them not to after-times." The best character in the story is George Wayte, a rustic lover of Gentian, who, by the way, turns out to be no farmer's daughter, as she seems to be at the beginning of the first volume. George is not a bad fellow, although
Gentian has to correct him for saying "What is Lord Malyon ?" instead of "Who is Lord Malyon
Holy Living : a Year-Book of Thoughts from Jeremy Taylor. (Marcus Ward and Co.)—No better author could be found for the purposes of such a selection as this, so great is the abundance of fine thoughts, expressed with admirable force and beauty, which he furnishes. It is not only the work which bears the title given to this selection, but the whole of the great preacher's writing, from which this selection has been made. The result is a very satisfactory volume, which has also the advantage of an appropriately handsome appearance. Archdeacon Farrar has added a useful introduction.
The Devil's Portrait, by Anton Giulio Barrili (Remington), 18 a painful, but yet a rather powerful, story of Italian love, vengeance, and tragedy. As in most fictions of the kind, the plot is practically everything ; the incidents and the characters are nothing. The unfortunate hero is Spinello Spinelli, who develops into a great artist of the Michael Angelesque sort. But his betrothed, Fiordalisa, the daughter of his master, is spirited away from him by a rival brother artist, Buonalente, in a marvellous, and indeed incredible, fashion. Tuocio di Credi, a confederate of Buonalente, fastens himself upon Spinelli as a friend and admirer, and allows him to drift into a marriage which is nearly, if not quite, loveless. At last Spinelli discovers that Fiordalisa, whom he believes to be dead, has been forced to marry Buonalente. Him he kills, though not before the villain has had time to strike an Iago's blow at Fiordalisa. Finally, he goes mad, although, before his death, he retains reason enough to achieve wonders as an artist, and to kill the second villain of the story. Next to the plot, the artistic babble in The Devil's Portrait is most to be commended, because it is true to nature—at least, to nature in Italy. The Devil's Portrait has been translated freely but carefully.
History of Art in Phcenicia and its Dependencies. From the French of Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez. Translated and edited by Walter Armstrong, BA. 2 vols. (Chapman and HalL)—This work, with its full descriptions, written, it is clear, out of an ample knowledge of the subject, and its copious illustrations, numbering between six and seven hundred in all, is, if we might ever venture to use the term, of an exhaustive kind. It is, anyhow, most detailed and elaborate. Phoenician art is, indeed, a subject with peculiarities which do not make it easy to handle. The artistic temper in this curious people was receptive rather than original ; and as their habits of life brought them into wide contact with other races, it was subjected to many influences. Then, again, the remains of this cosmopolitan art, if we may so call it, are to be found anywhere rather than in the proper home of the' race. In Phoenicia itself there is ; here even inscriptions are very rare (there are only nine, the authors tell us, from the Syrian • coast). And in the great Phcenician colony of Carthage there is little also, though here inscriptions, with, however, but very little variety in them, are common. It is Cyprus that supplies the most plentiful and most abundant examples of the national art. Cyprus has been the scene of the labours of one of the most successful of explorers, and is rich in illustrations. Nor are other Mediterranean countries barren of them. The Phoenicians travelled widely, and left traces of themselves in most places' which they visited. Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, supply examples of their art and their handicraft. We find them also in unexpected places. A whole collection of _objects of art, for instance, was found some ten years ago in the necropolis of the Latian town of Praeneste. It is not only the artistic reader who should study these most interesting volumes; they illustrate history also, in the most instructive and suggestive way.
Warren Knowles, by Alan James Gulston (Remington and Co.), cannot be more fairly or truly described than as a well-stuffed novel, —well stuffed, even for three volumes, with letterprese, adventures, conspiracies, crimes, and scoundrels of both sexes and of all types. Warren Knowles himself is a young man endowed with the wisdom of a serpent and the harmlessness of a dove; and so he bears a charmed life both at home and abroad, recovers the family property which had been cozened from his father by a firm of legal sharks, and marries the young lady of his choice. He certainly does his best to attain success, if hard work in preserving one's own life and in reforming the lives of other people merits happiness and prosperity in this world. He has in America to ran the gauntlet of the bullets of an Indian chief who has parted with certain diamonds to him, and theeeductive wiles of Kathleen O'Byrne, a beautiful barmaid, who wishes to possess herself both of him and of his diamonds. At the same time, he is hampered with a companion named Pistol Ball, alias Brandy Ball, whom he has solemnly promised to save although that worthy should drink himself into madness, which he faithfully proceeds to do, prefacing his carouse with the declaration : " Come woe, come weal ! a big drink is mine to-night !" At home, Knowles, disguised under the name of Hilton, has to baffle all sorts of intriguers and would-be murderer's, in addition to the American Circe, who turns up again to have her revenge on the man who does not love her ; while
his little leisure has to be devoted to rescuing distressed damsels, and putting poachers and gipaies on the right ethical path. Altogether, Mr. Gutleton— who, we should say, is not only a new, but a young writer—does his best to combine the methods of Miss Braddon and the late Captain Mayne Reid, and if his art is not particularly refined, and if his knowledge of human nature is rather limited, he is entertaining after a fashion. There is at least an air of what the old writers used to style "robustiousness" about him, which is agreeable rather than otherwise. But he must not paint such a large canvas next time he appeals to us ; above all, he must try to get hold of a good heroine, and place a higher ideal of fiction before himself than the three-volume dreadful.
General Gordon : Ms Life and Character. By G. W. Bacon. (G. W. Bacon and Co.)—This is a useful little sketch, though it passes over considerable periods of Gordon's life very hastily. The Crimean time, for instance, and the years spent on the Danubian and Armenian boundaries, though illustrated by Gordon's own letters, are compressed into something less than a page. The life, too, at Gravesend wants its most effective details. Still, there is a fairly satisfactory account of the more prominent parts of Gordon's career, of his service in the Soudan (at his first visit), in China, and his last defence of Khartoum. The volume, it must be remembered, is limited to fifty pages ; within that compass it puts much.
SCHOOL Booxs.—The Fourth Book of Thucydides. Edited, with Notes, by A. T. Barton, M.A., and A. S. Chavasse, B.C.L. (Longmans.)—This is a very instructive and useful book. It would not be easy to find a difficulty that does not meet with a full and, for the most part, satisfactory treatment. The complicated—perhaps we should rather say entangled—style of Thucydides is carefully and patiently unravelled ; grammatical constructions—as, e.g., the somewhat intricate usages of the particles—are noted and explained, and points of history and geography amply illustrated. This last is a not less noticeable feature of the book than the minuteness of the grammatical annotation. Would it be practicable, we should like to know, to separate these two classes of notes, pitting the latter on the same page with the text, and collecting the former at the end P A reader cannot have the comments on constructions too close under his eye (we take it for granted that he is one who really wishes to learn) ; and he is apt to pass over difficulties and peculiarities as long as he gets a fairly correct notion of the general sense of the passage, if the trouble of reference is too great. The separation would not be easy, we allow ; but we think that a rough line might be drawn. We do not always agree with Messrs. Barton and Chavasse's views (in c. xiii., e.g., we are inclined to take cppa/ar Toin garAous as being rather in opposition with & Sieeoiefurav than an infinitive of purpose, an explanation of which one is inclined to be chary). But they are always worthy of attention, and are urged in a forcible way. The renderings are, we think, occasionally somewhat bald, a fault into which the editors' feeling that a version "cannot be too close to the original or too simple and concise in style," is not unlikely to lead. After all, the Greek has to be put into English, and not into a language which no Englishman, out of a class-room or lecture-room or examination-hall, ever wrote or spoke. We try to put English into the best Latin or Greek that we can. Why not have the same ideal in the converse process P—Letters of Cicero. Selected and Arranged, with Introduction and Notes. By T. C.
Muirhead. (Rivingtons.)—Mr. Muirhead's is a useful book, as it could not fail to be when an editor will take proper pains and use the best authorities. Bat it might, we think, have been made better. Mr. Mairhead says that these letters have been "arranged." Bat this, we find, means nothing more than that the Epistoke ad Familiares and the Epistolce ad Atticunt have been mixed up together in their commonly accepted order. But no adequate attempt has been made to correct this order, which is known to be frequently erroneous. Professor Tyrrell, for instance, puts Fain., v. 7, before Earn., v. 1, as being the first that we find of Cicero's writing after the breach caused by his consulship. The present editor would have done well to follow here and elsewhere his lead. Again, we cannot say that we think the notes adequate. In 1 (ad Att.,i.1), e.g., " dolo male mancipio accepisse," might very well have been explained otherwise than by the very doubtful statement "that the defendant was accused of buying-up Varius' bankrupt property at a false valuation." There is no "false valuation" in the matter. The defendant had bought what Varies had no right to sell at any valuation, because it belonged, not to him, but to the creditors. Is it not possible, too, that among the "humanity students" for whom the volume is, we are told, primarily intended, there may be a few who need to be told that male goes with dolo and not with manzipio "A fraudulent valuation" might possibly suggest the latter. In 19 (ad Att., iii. 19), we have on "non quo men interesset loci natura" this note :—" The construction of interest with a noun for subject is not elsewhere found in Cicero ; but the analogous construction with refert seems to support the use in familiar style." Here again Professor Tyrrell might have been advantageously consulted. He gives very. good reason why "quae esset," which, as he well remarks, is an obvious instance of ia3Aftk1a, should be inserted. And is there any analogonsdassied use of refert t—Caesar : de Bello Gallico, VIII. With a Map and English Notes, by A. G. Peakett, M.A. (Cambridge University Press.)—This is a careful edition, giving the young student all that he wants, and not without value for the more advanced also. We may especially mention the geographical notes, a point which an older generation very much neglected, but which are essential to the interest, and even the intelligibility, of the original. The book is profitable as a study of the difference between that great master of style, Caesar, and its much inferior writer.—Latin Prose. Part I.—Caesarian Prose. By Francis P. Simpson. (Macruillan.)—Mr. Simpson works out here an excellent idea—the teaching of a good Latin style by the special study of the Latin author who affords the best available model for a given class of subjects. He explains his object thus :—" Each group of these exercises is founded on a passage in Caesar. All the words, phrases, and constructions needed for the translation of the English into Latin will be found in the specified portion of the Commentaries; and, on the other land, all, or practically all, of the words, phrases, and constructions to be found in that portion of the Commentaries, are brought into use." We have no fault to find with the way in which this object is carried out. It has been done in a most careful and painstaking way. Verily, if this generation does not learn to write Latin prose, it will not be for want of good help. But is it to be by some strange irony of fate that when the apparatus of teaching has been made complete, the subject will cease to be taught, just as the coaches had reached perfection when the railways came to sweep them away ? Mr. Simpson is too peremptory in saying (as far, at least, as Caner is concerned) that hie is changed in oratio oblique, to is and ille. Hie occurs repeatedly in reported speech in the De Bello Gallico.—Hints and Rules about Classical Composition. By F. A. Hooper, MA. (Relfe Brothers.)—There are some very useful things in this book, meant "to correct some common mistakes." They relate to both Greek and Latin composition, and are excellently arranged and clearly put. —Elementary Help-notes on Latin Parts of Speech and Sentences. By W. Thornton Bullock, M.A. (Rolfe Brothers.)—This book goes over the ground, we should be inclined to say, too rapidly. It contains less than fifty loosely-printed pages in all, and yet the learner, who begins on page 1 by being told the parts of speech, by the time he reaches page 44, is supposed to have mastered the rules for oratio obliqua.—Elementary Greek Syntax. By F. E. Thompson, MA. (Rivingtons.)--Mr. Thompson here adopts that excellent book which we had the pleasure of commending to our readers some little time ago,—the Syntax of Attic Greek. It is intended to give such an outline of Greek syntax as a boy may be expected to know by the time he reaches the sixth form.— Easy Latin and Greek Passages for Practice in Unseen Translation, by J. Arnold Turner, B.A. (Rivingtons), gives 177 pieces of Latin (117 of prose and 60 of verse) and 127 of Greek (87 of prose and 40 of verse). The general subject of each extract is given by the heading (a point on which, we observe, teachers are divided, some preferring that the scholar should be left absolutely withoat guide), and a few less familiar words are supplied in a vocabulary at the end of each piece. The collection is extended for "Lower and Middle Classes" in schools. It comes, we see, from a well-known and successful preparatory school, and, we should say, is well adapted for its purpose.—Tableaux de la volut ion Fran caise, edited by T. F. Crane, A.M., and S. J. Bruer, B.S. (G. P. Putnam's Sons), is "an Historical French Reader," consisting of extracts collected from a variety of sources, not only authors as Erckmann-Chatrian, de Tooqueville, Louis Blanc, Mignet, ezc., but newspapers of the period, as Le Vieux Cordelier for a speech of Camille Desmoulins (July 12th, 1789), being put under contribution.—The History of Ireland for Schott's. By William F. Collier, D.D. (Marcus Ward and Co.) —This book haa something of the spirit and language which Dr. Collier shows in his "History of England." Ho has a knack of seizing picturesque points and putting them into a clear and effective narrative. A feature to be noticed is the illustrations, not useless fancy pictures, which do nothing to improve the reader's grasp of the subject, but really relevant. Another is the account of social life in ancient Ireland ; and a third the etymological account of Irish names.—An Elementary Treat ise on Dynamics. By B. Williamson, M.A., and Francis A. Tarleton, LL.D. (Longn.:ans.)—Weekly Problem Papers, with Notes, by the Rev. John Milne, M.A. (Macmillan and Co.), "intended for the use of students preparing for mathematical scholarships, and for the junior members of the Universities who are reading for mathematical honours."
We have received a third edition of Mr. W. A. Hunter's Introduction to Roman Law (William Maxwell and Son), a lucid exposition of its subject, illustrated by comparisons with important points of English law, and, in some respects, supplem ented. An appendix contains examination questions, and there is a supplementary glossary of technical phrases.
Previous page
